The purpose of this Mentored Research Scientist Development Award (K01) is to provide the candidate, a recently graduated health economist, with additional training and research experience that will enable him to pursue an academic career in aging with a focus on the economics of nursing home quality care issues. In order to fully understand and investigate patient-level quality measures, the candidate will need to acquire specialized knowledge and skills. He proposes a career development plan with a mentoring team of senior faculty that will provide clinical, measurement, and modeling expertise in the use of patient-level data. The research program consists of a study of within-facility variation in the quality of nursing home care. The first aim of this study tests whether disparities in nursing home care and nursing home outcomes exist across Medicaid and private-pay residents within a common facility. The second aim of this study evaluates whether disparities in nursing home care and nursing home outcomes exist across racial and ethnic minority and majority residents within a common facility. By using recent MDS data over multiple years, the proposed study will greatly increase our understanding of differences in nursing home quality by payer status and race. The results will allow providers, advocates, clinicians, consumers and policymakers to better evaluate and address within-facility disparities in nursing home care.